Fruitfulness - Emile Zola
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39
Great perturbation had come over Norine, who let her head fall back on
her pillow, over which streamed her thick fair hair, whilst her face
darkened and she stammered: "_Mon Dieu_, _mon Dieu_! you are going to
worry me again!"
Then she pressed her hands to her eyes as if anxious to see nothing more.
"This is what the regulations require of me, monsieur," said Madame
Bourdieu to Mathieu in an undertone, while leaving the young mother for a
moment to her reflections. "We are recommended to do all we can to
persuade our boarders, especially when they are situated like this one,
to nurse their infants. You are aware that this often saves not only the
child, but the mother herself, from the sad future which threatens her.
And so, however much she may wish to abandon the child, we leave it near
her as long as possible, and feed it with the bottle, in the hope that
the sight of the poor little creature may touch her heart and awaken
feelings of motherliness in her. Nine times out of ten, as soon as she
gives the child the breast, she is vanquished, and she keeps it. That is
why you still see this baby here."
Mathieu, feeling greatly moved, drew near to Norine, who still lay back
amid her streaming hair, with her hands pressed to her face. "Come," said
he, "you are a goodhearted girl, there is no malice in you. Why not
yourself keep that dear little fellow?"
Then she uncovered her burning, tearless face: "Did the father even come
to see me?" she asked bitterly. "I can't love the child of a man who has
behaved as he has! The mere thought that it's there, in that cradle, puts
me in a rage."
"But that dear little innocent isn't guilty. It's he whom you condemn,
yourself whom you punish, for now you will be quite alone, and he might
prove a great consolation."
"No, I tell you no, I won't. I can't keep a child like that with nobody
to help me. We all know what we can do, don't we? Well, it is of no use
my questioning myself. I'm not brave enough, I'm not stupid enough to do
such a thing. No, no, and no."
He said no more, for he realized that nothing would prevail over that
thirst for liberty which she felt in the depths of her being. With a
gesture he expressed his sadness, but he was neither indignant nor angry
with her, for others had made her what she was.
"Well, it's understood, you won't be forced to feed it," resumed Madame
Bourdieu, attempting a final effort. "But it isn't praiseworthy to
abandon the child. Why not trust it to Madame here, who would put it out
to nurse, so that you would be able to take it back some day, when you
have found work? It wouldn't cost much, and no doubt the father would
pay."
This time Norine flew into a passion. "He! pay? Ah! you don't know him.
It's not that the money would inconvenience him, for he's a millionnaire.
But all he wants is to see the little one disappear. If he had dared he
would have told me to kill it! Just ask that gentleman if I speak the
truth. You see that he keeps silent! And how am I to pay when I haven't a
copper, when to-morrow I shall be cast out-of-doors, perhaps, without
work and without bread. No, no, a thousand times no, I can't!"
Then, overcome by an hysterical fit of despair, she burst into sobs. "I
beg you, leave me in peace. For the last fortnight you have been
torturing me with that child, by keeping him near me, with the idea that
I should end by nursing him. You bring him to me, and set him on my
knees, so that I may look at him and kiss him. You are always worrying me
with him, and making him cry with the hope that I shall pity him and take
him to my breast. But, _mon Dieu_! can't you understand that if I turn my
head away, if I don't want to kiss him or even to see him, it is because
I'm afraid of being caught and loving him like a big fool, which would be
a great misfortune both for him and for me? He'll be far happier by
himself! So, I beg you, let him be taken away at once, and don't torture
me any more."
Sobbing violently, she again sank back in bed, and buried her dishevelled
head in the pillows.
La Couteau had remained waiting, mute and motionless, at the foot of the
bedstead. In her gown of dark woollen stuff and her black cap trimmed
with yellow ribbons she retained the air of a peasant woman in her Sunday
best. And she strove to impart an expression of compassionate good-nature
to her long, avaricious, false face. Although it seemed to her unlikely
that business would ensue, she risked a repetition of her customary
speech.
"At Rougemont, you know, madame, your little one would be just the same
as at home. There's no better air in the Department; people come there
from Bayeux to recruit their health. And if you only knew how well the
little ones are cared for! It's the only occupation of the district, to
have little Parisians to coddle and love! And, besides, I wouldn't charge
you dear. I've a friend of mine who already has three nurslings, and, as
she naturally brings them up with the bottle, it wouldn't put her out to
take a fourth for almost next to nothing. Come, doesn't that suit
you--doesn't that tempt you?"
When, however, she saw that tears were Norine's only answer, she made an
impatient gesture like an active woman who cannot afford to lose her
time. At each of her fortnightly journeys, as soon as she had rid herself
of her batch of nurses at the different offices, she hastened round the
nurses' establishments to pick up infants, so as to take the train
homewards the same evening together with two or three women who, as she
put it, helped her "to cart the little ones about." On this occasion she
was in a greater hurry, as Madame Bourdieu, who employed her in a variety
of ways, had asked her to take Norine's child to the Foundling Hospital
if she did not take it to Rougemont.
"And so," said La Couteau, turning to Madame Bourdieu, "I shall have only
the other lady's child to take back with me. Well, I had better see her
at once to make final arrangements. Then I'll take this one and carry it
yonder as fast as possible, for my train starts at six o'clock."
When La Couteau and Madame Bourdieu had gone off to speak to Rosine, who
was the "other lady" referred to, the room sank into silence save for the
wailing and sobbing of Norine. Mathieu had seated himself near the
cradle, gazing compassionately at the poor little babe, who was still
peacefully sleeping. Soon, however, Victoire, the little servant girl,
who had hitherto remained silent, as if absorbed in her sewing, broke the
heavy silence and talked on slowly and interminably without raising her
eyes from her needle.
"You were quite right in not trusting your child to that horrid woman!"
she began. "Whatever may be done with him at the hospital, he will be
better off there than in her hands. At least he will have a chance to
live. And that's why I insisted, like you, on having mine taken there at
once. You know I belong in that woman's region--yes, I come from
Berville, which is barely four miles from Rougemont, and I can't help
knowing La Couteau, for folks talk enough about her in our village. She's
a nice creature and no mistake! And it's a fine trade that she plies,
selling other people's milk. She was no better than she should be at one
time, but at last she was lucky enough to marry a big, coarse, brutal
fellow, whom at this time of day she leads by the nose. And he helps her.
Yes, he also brings nurses to Paris and takes babies back with him, at
busy times. But between them they have more murders on their consciences
than all the assassins that have ever been guillotined. The mayor of
Berville, a bourgeois who's retired from business and a worthy man, said
that Rougemont was the curse of the Department. I know well enough that
there's always been some rivalry between Rougemont and Berville; but, the
folks of Rougemont ply a wicked trade with the babies they get from
Paris. All the inhabitants have ended by taking to it, there's nothing
else doing in the whole village, and you should just see how things are
arranged so that there may be as many funerals as possible. Ah! yes,
people don't keep their stock-in-trade on their hands. The more that die,
the more they earn. And so one can understand that La Couteau always
wants to take back as many babies as possible at each journey she makes."
Victoire recounted these dreadful things in her simple way, as one whom
Paris has not yet turned into a liar, and who says all she knows,
careless what it may be.
"And it seems things were far worse years ago," she continued. "I have
heard my father say that, in his time, the agents would bring back four
or five children at one journey--perfect parcels of babies, which they
tied together and carried under their arms. They set them out in rows on
the seats in the waiting-rooms at the station; and one day, indeed, a
Rougemont agent forgot one child in a waiting-room, and there was quite a
row about it, because when the child was found again it was dead. And
then you should have seen in the trains what a heap of poor little things
there was, all crying with hunger. It became pitiable in winter time,
when there was snow and frost, for they were all shivering and blue with
cold in their scanty, ragged swaddling-clothes. One or another often died
on the way, and then it was removed at the next station and buried in the
nearest cemetery. And you can picture what a state those who didn't die
were in. At our place we care better for our pigs, for we certainly
wouldn't send them travelling in that fashion. My father used to say that
it was enough to make the very stones weep. Nowadays, however, there's
more supervision; the regulations allow the agents to take only one
nursling back at a time. But they know all sorts of tricks, and often
take a couple. And then, too, they make arrangements; they have women who
help them, and they avail themselves of those who may be going back into
the country alone. Yes, La Couteau has all sorts of tricks to evade the
law. And, besides, all the folks of Rougemont close their eyes--they are
too much interested in keeping business brisk; and all they fear is that
the police may poke their noses into their affairs. Ah! it is all very
well for the Government to send inspectors every month, and insist on
registers, and the Mayor's signature and the stamp of the Commune; why,
it's just as if it did nothing. It doesn't prevent these women from
quietly plying their trade and sending as many little ones as they can to
kingdom-come. We've got a cousin at Rougemont who said to us one day: 'La
Malivoire's precious lucky, she got rid of four more during last month.'"
Victoire paused for a moment to thread her needle. Norine was still
weeping, while Mathieu listened, mute with horror, and with his eyes
fixed upon the sleeping child.
"No doubt folks say less about Rougemont nowadays than they used to," the
girl resumed; "but there's still enough to disgust one. We know three or
four baby-farmers who are not worth their salt. The rule is to bring the
little ones up with the bottle, you know; and you'd be horrified if you
saw what bottles they are--never cleaned, always filthy, with the milk
inside them icy cold in the winter and sour in the summer. La Vimeux, for
her part, thinks that the bottle system costs too much, and so she feeds
her children on soup. That clears them off all the quicker. At La
Loiseau's you have to hold your nose when you go near the corner where
the little ones sleep--their rags are so filthy. As for La Gavette, she's
always working in the fields with her man, so that the three or four
nurslings that she generally has are left in charge of the grandfather,
an old cripple of seventy, who can't even prevent the fowls from coming
to peck at the little ones.* And things are worse even at La Cauchois',
for, as she has nobody at all to mind the children when she goes out
working, she leaves them tied in their cradles, for fear lest they should
tumble out and crack their skulls. You might visit all the houses in the
village, and you would find the same thing everywhere. There isn't a
house where the trade isn't carried on. Round our part there are places
where folks make lace, or make cheese, or make cider; but at Rougemont
they only make dead bodies."
* There is no exaggeration in what M. Zola writes on this subject.
I have even read in French Government reports of instances in
which nurslings have been devoured by pigs! And it is a well-known
saying in France that certain Norman and Touraine villages are
virtually "paved with little Parisians."--Trans.
All at once she ceased sewing, and looked at Mathieu with her timid,
clear eyes.
"But the worst of all," she continued, "is La Couillard, an old thief who
once did six months in prison, and who now lives a little way out of the
village on the verge of the wood. No live child has ever left La
Couillard's. That's her specialty. When you see an agent, like La
Couteau, for instance, taking her a child, you know at once what's in the
wind. La Couteau has simply bargained that the little one shall die. It's
settled in a very easy fashion: the parents give a sum of three or four
hundred francs on condition that the little one shall be kept till his
first communion, and you may be quite certain that he dies within a week.
It's only necessary to leave a window open near him, as a nurse used to
do whom my father knew. At winter time, when she had half a dozen babies
in her house, she would set the door wide open and then go out for a
stroll. And, by the way, that little boy in the next room, whom La
Couteau has just gone to see, she'll take him to La Couillard's, I'm
sure; for I heard the mother, Mademoiselle Rosine, agree with her the
other day to give her a sum of four hundred francs down on the
understanding that she should have nothing more to do in the matter."
At this point Victoire ceased speaking, for La Couteau came in to fetch
Norine's child. Norine, who had emerged from her distress during the
servant girl's stories, had ended by listening to them with great
interest. But directly she perceived the agent she once more hid her face
in her pillows, as though she feared to see what was about to happen.
Mathieu, on his side, had risen from his chair and stood there quivering.
"So it's understood, I'm going to take the child," said La Couteau.
"Madame Bourdieu has given me a slip of paper bearing the date of the
birth and the address. Only I ought to have some Christian names. What do
you wish the child to be called?"
Norine did not at first answer. Then, in a faint distressful voice, she
said: "Alexandre."
"Alexandre, very well. But you would do better to give the boy a second
Christian name, so as to identify him the more readily, if some day you
take it into your head to run after him."
It was again necessary to tear a reply from Norine. "Honore," she said.
"Alexandre Honore--all right. That last name is yours, is it not?* And
the first is the father's? That is settled; and now I've everything I
need. Only it's four o'clock already, and I shall never get back in time
for the six o'clock train if I don't take a cab. It's such a long way
off--the other side of the Luxembourg. And a cab costs money. How shall
we manage?"
* Norine is, of course, a diminutive of Honorine, which is the
feminine form of Honore.--Trans.
While she continued whining, to see if she could not extract a few francs
from the distressed girl, it suddenly occurred to Mathieu to carry out
his mission to the very end by driving with her himself to the Foundling
Hospital, so that he might be in a position to inform Beauchene that the
child had really been deposited there, in his presence. So he told La
Couteau that he would go down with her, take a cab, and bring her back.
"All right; that will suit me. Let us be off! It's a pity to wake the
little one, since he's so sound asleep; but all the same, we must pack
him off, since it's decided."
With her dry hands, which were used to handling goods of this
description, she caught up the child, perhaps, however, a little roughly,
forgetting her assumed wheedling good nature now that she was simply
charged with conveying it to hospital. And the child awoke and began to
scream loudly.
"Ah! dear me, it won't be amusing if he keeps up this music in the cab.
Quick, let us be off."
But Mathieu stopped her. "Won't you kiss him, Norine?" he asked.
At the very first squeal that sorry mother had dipped yet lower under her
sheets, carrying her hands to her ears, distracted as she was by the
sound of those cries. "No, no," she gasped, "take him away; take him away
at once. Don't begin torturing me again!"
Then she closed her eyes, and with one arm repulsed the child who seemed
to be pursuing her. But when she felt that the agent was laying him on
the bed, she suddenly shuddered, sat up, and gave a wild hasty kiss,
which lighted on the little fellow's cap. She had scarcely opened her
tear-dimmed eyes, and could have seen but a vague phantom of that poor
feeble creature, wailing and struggling at the decisive moment when he
was being cast into the unknown.
"You are killing me! Take him away; take him away!"
Once in the cab the child suddenly became silent. Either the jolting of
the vehicle calmed him, or the creaking of the wheels filled him with
emotion. La Couteau, who kept him on her knees, at first remained silent,
as if interested in the people on the footwalks, where the bright sun was
shining. Then, all of a sudden, she began to talk, venting her thoughts
aloud.
"That little woman made a great mistake in not trusting the child to me.
I should have put him out to nurse properly, and he would have grown up
finely at Rougemont. But there! they all imagine that we simply worry
them because we want to do business. But I just ask you, if she had given
me five francs for myself and paid my return journey, would that have
ruined her? A pretty girl like her oughtn't to be hard up for money. I
know very well that in our calling there are some people who are hardly
honest, who speculate and ask for commissions, and then put out nurslings
at cheap rates and rob both the parents and the nurse. It's really not
right to treat these dear little things as if they were goods--poultry or
vegetables. When folks do that I can understand that their hearts get
hardened, and that they pass the little ones on from hand to hand without
any more care than if they were stock-in-trade. But then, monsieur, I'm
an honest woman; I'm authorized by the mayor of our village; I hold a
certificate of morality, which I can show to anybody. If ever you should
come to Rougemont, just ask after Sophie Couteau there. Folks will tell
you that I'm a hard-working woman, and don't owe a copper to a soul!"
Mathieu could not help looking at her to see how unblushingly she thus
praised herself. And her speech struck him as if it were a premeditated
reply to all that Victoire had related of her, for, with the keen scent
of a shrewd peasant woman, she must have guessed that charges had been
brought against her. When she felt that his piercing glance was diving to
her very soul, she doubtless feared that she had not lied with sufficient
assurance, and had somehow negligently betrayed herself; for she did not
insist, but put on more gentleness of manner, and contented herself with
praising Rougemont in a general way, saying what a perfect paradise it
was, where the little ones were received, fed, cared for, and coddled as
if they were all sons of princes. Then, seeing that the gentleman uttered
never a word, she became silent once more. It was evidently useless to
try to win him over. And meantime the cab rolled and rolled along;
streets followed streets, ever noisy and crowded; and they crossed the
Seine and at last drew near to the Luxembourg. It was only after passing
the palace gardens that La Couteau again began:
"Well, it's that young person's own affair if she imagines that her child
will be better off for passing through the Foundling. I don't attack the
Administration, but you know, monsieur, there's a good deal to be said on
the matter. At Rougemont we have a number of nurslings that it sends us,
and they don't grow any better or die less frequently than the others.
Well, well, people are free to act as they fancy; but all the same I
should like you to know, as I do, all that goes on in there."
The cab had stopped at the top of the Rue Denfert-Rochereau, at a short
distance from the former outer Boulevard. A big gray wall stretched out,
the frigid facade of a State establishment, and it was through a quiet,
simple, unobtrusive little doorway at the end of this wall that La
Couteau went in with the child. Mathieu followed her, but he did not
enter the office where a woman received the children. He felt too much
emotion, and feared lest he should be questioned; it was, indeed, as if
he considered himself an accomplice in a crime. Though La Couteau told
him that the woman would ask him nothing, and the strictest secrecy was
always observed, he preferred to wait in an anteroom, which led to
several closed compartments, where the persons who came to deposit
children were placed to wait their turn. And he watched the woman go off,
carrying the little one, who still remained extremely well behaved, with
a vacant stare in his big eyes.
Though the interval of waiting could not have lasted more than twenty
minutes, it seemed terribly long to Mathieu. Lifeless quietude reigned in
that stern, sad-looking anteroom, wainscoted with oak, and pervaded with
the smell peculiar to hospitals. All he heard was the occasional faint
wail of some infant, above which now and then rose a heavy, restrained
sob, coming perhaps from some mother who was waiting in one of the
adjoining compartments. And he recalled the "slide" of other days, the
box which turned within the wall. The mother crept up, concealing herself
much as possible from view, thrust her baby into the cavity as into an
oven, gave a tug at the bell-chain, and then precipitately fled. Mathieu
was too young to have seen the real thing; he had only seen it
represented in a melodrama at the Port St. Martin Theatre.* But how many
stories it recalled--hampers of poor little creatures brought up from the
provinces and deposited at the hospital by carriers; the stolen babes of
Duchesses, here cast into oblivion by suspicious-looking men; the
hundreds of wretched work-girls too who had here rid themselves of their
unfortunate children. Now, however, the children had to be deposited
openly, and there was a staff which took down names and dates, while
giving a pledge of inviolable secrecy. Mathieu was aware that some few
people imputed to the suppression of the slide system the great increase
in criminal offences. But each day public opinion condemns more and more
the attitude of society in former times, and discards the idea that one
must accept evil, dam it in, and hide it as if it were some necessary
sewer; for the only course for a free community to pursue is to foresee
evil and grapple with it, and destroy it in the bud. To diminish the
number of cast-off children one must seek out the mothers, encourage
them, succor them, and give them the means to be mothers in fact as well
as in name. At that moment, however, Mathieu did not reason; it was his
heart that was affected, filled with growing pity and anguish at the
thought of all the crime, all the shame, all the grief and distress that
had passed through that anteroom in which he stood. What terrible
confessions must have been heard, what a procession of suffering,
ignominy, and wretchedness must have been witnessed by that woman who
received the children in her mysterious little office! To her all the
wreckage of the slums, all the woe lying beneath gilded life, all the
abominations, all the tortures that remain unknown, were carried. There
in her office was the port for the shipwrecked, there the black hole that
swallowed up the offspring of frailty and shame. And while Mathieu's
spell of waiting continued he saw three poor creatures arrive at the
hospital. One was surely a work-girl, delicate and pretty though she
looked, so thin, so pale too, and with so wild an air that he remembered
a paragraph he had lately read in a newspaper, recounting how another
such girl, after forsaking her child, had thrown herself into the river.
The second seemed to him to be a married woman, some workman's wife, no
doubt, overburdened with children and unable to provide food for another
mouth; while the third was tall, strong, and insolent,--one of those who
bring three or four children to the hospital one after the other. And all
three women plunged in, and he heard them being penned in separate
compartments by an attendant, while he, with stricken heart, realizing
how heavily fate fell on some, still stood there waiting.
* The "slide" system, which enabled a mother to deposit her child
at the hospital without being seen by those within, ceased to be
employed officially as far back as 1847; but the apparatus was
long preserved intact, and I recollect seeing it in the latter
years of the Second Empire, _cir._ 1867-70, when I was often at
the artists' studios in the neighborhood. The aperture through
which children were deposited in the sliding-box was close to
the little door of which M. Zola speaks.--Trans.